What’s next for David Simon? The Wire creator recently spoke to Variety about his upcoming HBO series, The Deuce.
In addition to The Wire, Simon created the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Streets, HBO’s Treme, and the recent HBO mini-series Show Me a Hero.
The Deuce centers around the New York City porn industry in the 1970s and ’80s. It stars James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Carr, and Zoe Kazan. When asked about the series, Simon said it’s a story about capitalism:
It’s roughly based on the story of the actual people who were there, some of the people that were the pioneers when pornography came out of the brown paper bag and became an open industry. Suddenly, a lucrative and provocative industry came out of nowhere soon to become a billion-dollar industry and a culture [impacting] right down to commercials to sell beer that became more and more overt right down to the sex education of a twelve-year-old with a laptop. We all live in a different world. There’s a cultural revolution here. But there is also a market story. It is a story about market capitalism and the rise of a new industry and what the world is like now when something is not supposed to be sold openly suddenly becomes legitimate and legitimized.”
He added that Franco will play twin brothers:
He plays twin brothers actually. His character is based on somebody who passed away in January, the last brother, but before that while we were developing the project the guy came to us and he told his whole life story to Marc Henry Johnson and he told it again to George [Pelecanos] and myself. He and his brother were deeply involved in the rise of all of 42nd street.”
Additionally, Simon confirmed the pilot’s already been shot and HBO has ordered the show to series:
The pilot is already shot, they’ve ordered the series. We are supposed to start shooting the remaining episodes of season one beginning of May.
The pilot was around $12 million. I confess we shot just enough to show you what the CGI could do. We used the computer generated enhancements in a couple of scenes and then we turned it on with the work undone on other scenes because why spend the money unless HBO is going to pick it up? Actually, we had to go back and finish the pilot with CGI. That’s pretty typical.”
HBO has not announced a premiere date yet.
What do you think? Are you a fan of David Simon’s work? Will you watch The Deuce?
You are currently viewing the mobile version of our site. View the full site to get free email alerts, vote on your favorite shows, comment, and more.